Holy Smokes (10 page)

I kissed him, urging him with my body and mind to what I wanted most…and then he did it. Dragon fire filled me, burning through my heart and soul, lighting my very being on fire until I thought I would explode in a wild conflagration that would destroy us both. The fire poured back from me to him, the cycle complete, filling me with joy so profound it almost drove me to the brink of ecstasy.

“Take me home,” I all but sobbed, desperate with my need for him, wanting what we had together, frantic to revel in the fire that was shared between us. “Dear god, take me home right now!”

He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me with him as he fell backwards into pillows that tumbled from our bed to the floor. The material of his pants beneath my thighs melted into steely, hot flesh, flesh that shimmered goldish green for a moment before resolving itself into familiar muscled thighs.

“You shifted,” I said on a gasp as his penis nudged my sensitive parts. “For a second you shifted, just like you do when you have an orgasm.”

“I’m not that far off,” he growled, biting my neck. “I want you, Aisling. I need you. I cannot live without you. You are mine, my treasure, my love, and no one will ever take you away from me.”

“Never,” I swore, trying to twist to reach him, reach the part of him that I desperately needed burning deep within me.

“No. Not tonight. This night is for you,” he growled, his fire licking along my skin. He spun me around, moving so that I was facedown on the blankets, his body covering my back. My breasts, sensitized by his dragon fire, rubbed against the cool of the silk pillows as he parted my legs, entering me just enough to leave my body hanging on the edge of anticipation.

“Drake!” I yelled, pounding the pillows, helpless to pull him into me as I wanted.

“I do not wish to harm you.”

“The doctor said it was perfectly safe to do anything that was comfortable, and if you don’t finish this in the next few seconds, I’m going to die of sexual frustration, and then you’ll have to explain to everyone why I’m dead with a tremendous scowl on my face!”

His growl matched mine as he lunged forward, his fire filling me even as his body did, the combination of the two pushing me into a deep well of rapture that seemed to consume me. The world condensed to the moment, the sound of his body meeting mine, of the growls of pleasure that came from deep within his chest, his breathing as ragged and fast as mine.

“I love you, Aisling.” Strong, tanned fingers splayed on the pillows next to my head changed into blue claws, the flesh of his arm shimmering into iridescent scales as fire burst up in a ring around us. I took his fire into me and returned it with a shout of completion that he picked up and continued, our bodies and souls and hearts burning as one for a bright, endless moment that would live in my memory for eternity.

And then I woke up.

“Goddamn it!” I swore, as soon as I realized the space next to me was cold and empty. I punched Drake’s pillow, wanting to scream to the heavens. My body still hummed with the aftershocks of the pleasure he’d given me…but had it been real? Or just a figment of my disturbed mind? “Damn it! Damn
him
!”

A thump sounded against the door connecting to the opulent bathroom that Jim had claimed as its bedroom.

“What?”

“You OK?” Jim’s voice asked, muffled.

“No! Oh…hell!”

“Abaddon.”

“Hell!” I yelled, and punched Drake’s pillow again.

“Can I come in, or are you and Drake gettin’ it on?”

“He’s not here, the bastard!”

The bathroom door opened, and Jim’s face peered into the room, an almost comical expression of wariness on its face. “What happened? You guys were all lovey-dovey last night. I thought Drake was happy about the baby?”

“He is, although he’s not happy I refused to let the doctor tell us the gender,” I snarled, pulling up the sheet and rubbing my arms as I glanced at the clock. It was just barely morning, my skin still tingling as if in response to Drake’s fire. I shook my head at my foolishness—of course our lovemaking hadn’t been real. I couldn’t share Drake’s fire. If the scene melting from a club to our bedroom hadn’t been a clue, the fact that I could share his fire should have raised all sorts of red flags in my head. What was worse was that, if he had to resort to a dream rather than making love to me in person, it meant he wasn’t here. Sometime during the night while I was sleeping, he’d left me. “God
damn
him!”

“Well, if that’s all you’re going to say, I might as well go back to bed,” Jim said, padding over to give my arm a quick swipe with its tongue. I patted its head, reminding myself that it wasn’t fair to take my bad humor out on Jim.

“You didn’t happen to hear Drake leave last night? He told me to go to bed because I was tired out after the long day, but if something happened and he had to go take care of a sept member or beat Chuan Ren’s head in or something, he would have told me.”

Jim cocked its head at something on the floor. “Looks like he decided you and the baby needed your sleep. There’s a letter.”

I pushed Jim aside to pick up the creamy envelope bearing the sept emblem, ripping it open to read the note inside.

“You’ve been hanging around sailors too much,” Jim said a minute later as the blue streak I was swearing came to an end. “Although I liked the bit about stinky, slimy weasel poop.”

“You’re right, he says he didn’t want to disturb my rest, the bastard,” I growled, wrapping a sheet around me as I stormed into the bathroom.

Jim, wisely, stayed where it was.

I emerged a few minutes later wearing my favorite bathrobe, a soft, comfy velvet garment that made me think of Victorian dressing gowns, but which Drake disliked because he said it covered up too much flesh. I buttoned it now with defiance as I marched to the closet that contained my clothes. “He says he had to go help someone in a desperate situation. Who, exactly, he refuses to say. He doesn’t know when he’s going to be back, but suggests we put off the wedding for a few days. The rotter! How dare he just zoom off and not tell me where he’s going, or who he’s going to help, or what exactly he’s up to!”

“Yeah, how dare he go out and be all heroic and stuff when you want him here slobbering over your big boobs.”

I shot the demon a look that warned of retribution. “Leave my boobs out of this. They have nothing to do with this extraordinary lack of trust that Drake is exhibiting by doing this. The rat! I thought we were to the point where we shared everything. He’s not supposed to keep secrets from me! Lord knows, he makes me tell him everything!”

“Everything?” Jim asked, raising one doggy eyebrow.

I froze as I thought over a few facts I’d decided to keep to myself. I’d told Drake that I had seen Gabriel, but I hadn’t recounted the entire conversation, not wanting Drake to get so annoyed that he went after Gabriel. That could be excused as a desire to keep any more of the dragon septs from warring with us, but the fact that I’d downplayed to him the involvement the dark power had in my life was less easily explained away. He knew it spoke to me, he knew I could easily wield it, but until the previous day’s demonstration at the Guardians’ Guild, I don’t think he fully realized just how much power I had at my fingertips.

Admit it—you love me.

I swore under my breath as I thought over what effect that realization might have had on him. Had he been so disquieted, felt so threatened because I had more impact using the dark power than his own dragon fire that he left me on a flimsy pretense? I ran over the events of the past evening, mentally shaking my head. He’d been quietly pleased when the ultrasound had proven beyond all doubts that the next generation of green dragons was a half-year away. He had treated me with his usual blend of courtesy and arrogance, laying down a series of ridiculous laws ranging from me not being allowed to lift anything heavier than ten pounds to an outright refusal to let me keep the meeting with the blue dragons.

Things were a bit dicey for a short while when I told him what I thought of his silly rules, but by the time he’d escorted me upstairs to our room, we’d come to a compromise whereby he’d stop being unnecessarily protective, and I wouldn’t light his hair on fire while he slept.

Then he slipped away during the night without a word and sent me the most erotic dream of my life.

“Damn him,” I said, banging my forehead gently on the closet door.

“
C
ara!”

I turned at the familiar voice that called down at me, looking with a dispassionate eye at the man who walked to ward us.

“That him?” Uncle Damian asked, giving Fiat the same jaded eye.

“Yup.”

“Looks like a porn star.”

“Do I wanna ask how he knows what a porn star looks like?” Jim asked Rene.

“I do not think so, my friend. Aisling, I have my little companion with me, if there is any trouble with the blue wyvern,” Rene said, touching my arm as he patted the breast of his jacket. “Him, I do not trust farther than I can spit.”

“How on earth did you get a gun smuggled into England?” I asked, surprised.

He gave his trademark Gallic shrug. “I did not travel by conventional means.”

“I don’t think I want to know,” Uncle Damian muttered, shooting me an odd look.

I smiled and tried to look as normal as possible, which, given that I was standing on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, surrounded by my uncle, a daimon, and my demon dog, wasn’t very successful. “Oh, Traci!”

The demon steward popped into view in front of me holding a cup of coffee and a croissant. Its startled expression changed to one of resignation that morphed almost instantly to irritation. “My lord Aisling. I wondered when you were going to summon me. The situation is most urgent, I assure you. If you had just warned me ahead of time that you would be summoning me, I would have had the paperwork in my possession—”

“What situation?” I asked, one eye on Fiat as he trotted down the steps of the cathedral, flanked on either side by his two henchmen. “No, never mind, I don’t have time for it right now. I have to attend a meeting of the blue dragons, and you’re here in the guise of protection. Got it?”

“Er—”

“That guy approaching who looks like he should be on the cover of
GQ
, that’s Fiat, the blue wyvern. You’re to particularly watch him, OK?”

“Eh—”

“And his cronies.” I straightened my shoulders and tried to look a lot calmer and cooler than I felt. “They may all look like Adonises, but they’re sneakier than snakes. Don’t take your eyes off of them.”

Jim squinted at Fiat as he stopped in front of us. “Hey, Fiat. Nice highlights. You use Miss Clairol or another brand?”

I tried to keep from smiling at Jim’s irreverent quip. There was no love lost between Fiat and my demon, but I didn’t need any more antagonism than was absolutely necessary. “Hush, Jim. Hello, Fiat. Long time no see.”

Fiat ran a quick glance around at my companions before taking my hand and kissing it. “
Cara, cara,
do you really think I would harm my own mate? This show of force is unnecessary, I assure you.”

“Unnecessary, possibly, but I have no intention of putting myself in your control.” I tried to pull my hand back from where he was still holding it, but his grip was deceptively strong.

He smiled. It made my skin crawl. “Do you believe you could be free of that?”

“Let’s get something straight right now,” I said briskly, jerking my hand out of his. A flash of blue fire lit his eyes for a moment, but it was nothing to my ire at finding myself in this position. “You may have finessed a way for me to act as your mate, but we both know that it’s not going to be a relationship that will work out. The green dragons acknowledge me as their wyvern’s mate. Drake and I are going to be married in a few days. We love each other, and nothing you can do is going to stop any of that. I accept the fact that I have to attend your sept meetings until such time as you come to your senses, but don’t deceive yourself that I am weak and powerless. I may not technically be a Guardian at the moment, but I am a friggin’ prince of Abaddon, and you do
not
want to see what happens when I get sufficiently pissed.”

“Yeah,” Jim said, plopping its big old Newfie butt on my foot in a show of support. “She came close to bringing the Guardians’ Guild building down around their ears yesterday.”

“I find that rather difficult to believe,” Fiat said, eyeing me up and down as if I were a piece of beef.

“Believe it,” Rene said, straightening his shoulders and adopting a grim expression. “I was present. I saw the head of the Guild acknowledge her power.”

“Such a brave little woman,” Fiat answered, clearly amused. “Threatening the Guardians’ Guild all on her own? I am most impressed.”

“Aisling is not alone,” Uncle Damian said in a low voice that would have sent a lesser man screaming from the scene.

Fiat, however, was not so easily intimidated.

“So I see.” His gaze flickered over Uncle Damian before moving to Rene and Traci. “A mortal.”

“This is my uncle, Damian Carson. And don’t let the mortal bit fool you—Drake has absolute confidence in my uncle’s ability to serve as my bodyguard.”

Fiat’s eyebrows rose a smidgen. “High praise indeed. And here we have…a power?”

“Daimon,” Rene said, his jaw set firmly.

“A fate. What a very interesting choice of companions.” Fiat bowed his head at him before turning back to me. “And two demon minions. Very well,
cara.
Since I have no choice but to accept your foolish desire to be accompanied by a crowd, I will acquiesce. Shall we go? I have a car waiting.”

Uncle Damian went into full security mode as we approached the waiting limo, whipping out a small electronic device that he used to examine the car briefly before nodding at me. “It’s safe.”

“Really,
cara,
you must give me more credit than that,” Fiat said in a low voice right next to my ear, his hand cool on my back as I got into the car. A little shiver went down my arms and back as I shrugged his hand off. The blue dragon element was air, which caused them to feel a few degrees cooler than everyone else. “As if I would harm you.”